Saturday, 7 February 2009

Post the First - What's This All About?

So, welcome to the Iron Phoenix LARP Challenge blog.

The aim of this project is to document every step as I set up, run and critique a one-off Fading Suns LARP event by the 13th of March. That's just a month to build props, find players and a location, and run a game of significant length, before dissecting the event - not an easy proposition...

By 'every step', I mean describing and showing pictures of how I make props, discussing the art of crafting LARP stories and game theory as applied to this game (that's gaming theory and not Game Theory, which is totally different...), as well as other, related, subjects.

So, let's define some terms for those unfamiliar with what I'm on about.

Roleplaying is a hobby that started in the very late 70s and is quite unusual as hobbies go. However, in it's simplest terms, it combines basic storytelling as entertainment with a game element like the systems used in computer Roleplaying games underpinning the character's actions.

Live-Action Roleplaying is an offshoot where, instead of simply talking about characters or in their voices, players actually talk, dress up and act as their characters. It's a little like some form of semi-directed theatre where the goal is not to play to an audience, but to the other people involved.

Fading Suns is a specific game setting that describes a distant, byzantine,neo-feudal future in which the great Second Republic came and went leaving a new Dark Ages. I can't do the setting jsutice here, except to say that it is a deep and thoughtful setting that uses technology and supernatural elements to ask questions of the human condition (hence the invocation of the 'passion play' as a storytelling element). And to say that there is an introductory PDF file here.